Zarqawi_wa_anna
10-06-2006, 17:45
'He is not dead, he is alive with God This is a wedding, not a funeral' Ghaith Abdul-Ahad in Zarqa Saturday June 10, 2006 The Guardian After prayers, they gathered in their hundreds in the funeral tent near the house in the Jordanian town of Zarqa where he had lived. Among them were senior commanders of his organisation in Jordan. They listened to a sermon and pledged alliance to the new leader of al-Qaida in Iraq. The men, most of them with long bushy beards and dressed in the Afghan salwar kamees, a dress code of jihadis, came from all over Jordan. Some raised mobile phones to record the sermon. "If a mujahid dies, hundreds of others will replace him," cried Sheikh Jarah al-Qadah an old comrade of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. "We will continue the jihad against the infidels everywhere, in Iraq and Afghanistan and Palestine ... see my brothers our victories in Somalia now, blessed we are and blessed to give sacrifices like the life of our hero Abu Musab." At the entrance to the tent, made of bedouin carpets, the banner read: "The wedding of the hero Abu Musab al-Zarqawi." Inside were four rows of plastic chairs arranged on the sandy ground. A dozen or so were occupied. Ants crawled between people's feet. Guests came to the tent yesterday to pay their respects to the family of Zarqawi, who was killed on Wednesday evening by a US air strike. In the tradition of Islamic martyrs, his wake was being celebrated as a wedding - but unlike most weddings, the atmosphere in the tent was charged with anger, sadness and fear. Zarqawi's two brothers sat next to each other. Muhammad, the youngest, with a thin beard and a round, chubby face like that of his late sibling, wore a white Arab robe and a pair of sandals. Saiel, the older brother, wore black shoes, green trousers and a blue shirt. Saiel's grief was more obvious than Muhammad's. There were deep lines etched in his thin face, and he kept looking at the ground. In front of the brothers sat some of Zarqawi's cousins, in traditional robes and red kufiyas. A young man served thin, bitter coffee in small china cups. The silence was broken every few minutes by cries of "May God welcome him in heaven!" A man wearing a white dishdasha came into the tent, followed by a small boy. "Assalaam alaikum," he said, and went to the brothers and cousins kissing them on the cheeks and shaking hands. "May God receive him in heaven. He always wanted to be with the prophet and inshalah this will come true." "Inshalah," replied the men in a monotone. "Our brothers in Afghanistan used to tell me about him," continued the man. "They said he cried every time he missed a battle." "He sought martyrdom and, with God's blessings, he got what he wanted," said Muhammad. More men trickled in and out. Most parked their cars across the street, where dozens of children ran, some barefoot, others carrying sticks and looking fiercely at the passing cars of strangers. Two of the children, young boys wearing traditional Afghan shalwar kamees, were nephews of Zarqawi. Not far from the tent is the mosque where Zarqawi first converted to jihadi Islam before travelling to Afghanistan to practise his acquired faith in 1989. He returned to Jordan filled with jihadi experience and ideology. Israeli targets With other veterans from Afghanistan he formed a jihadi cell, but within a year the Jordanian authorities had arrested its members when they tried to attack Israeli targets in an ill-prepared operation. Zarqawi was sent to prison. Most of his former comrades and cellmates believe his transformation from an ordinary Arab boy into a jihadi commander took place in prison. The war in Iraq finally provided him with his long-awaited opportunity. "They were only 17 people when they established themselves in Iraq after the war," said one man to the Zarqawi brothers. "Look what they have achieved now, you should be proud." The men stopped talking when suspicious vehicles drove down the street. A car carrying two people wearing sunglasses passed in front of the tent a couple of times. "They are secret police," said Saiel. The tent was pitched in defiance of the Jordanian government, which had declared that Zarqawi was a terrorist and an enemy of the state. Jordanian newspapers hailed what was described as a government victory in infiltrating the organisation and passing intelligence to the Americans. "It was a Jordanian guy who denounced him, not an Iraqi," said a former militant. Saiel, who sat silently most of the time, replied with anger: "We will get him wherever he goes and behead him, even if he ends up in Bush's lap we will get him." "His ideas are still alive," said the former militant. "People in the Middle East look at him as a model now. The black cap he wore has become a symbol and young Muslims wear it everywhere." Saiel said the family wanted Zarqawi's body back. "We want to give a proper Islamic funeral." Zarqawi's death is expected to send ripples through the jihadi community, where he created a role for himself as a strategic planner and a commander of the insurgency. His stature was helped by the Americans, who found it convenient to have a central figure to blame. In reality, however, it is far more complicated than that. For many months Iraqi insurgents had been complaining about Zarqawi's techniques. On the one hand they needed him for the financial support he was able to provide and his extensive network of contacts in the jihadi world, but on the other they blamed him for bringing the wrath of the Shia militias by targeting the Shia community. Umbrella network In Amman, a jihadist told the Guardian: "The Americans created from him a pretext for the failures in Iraq. He was never in control of the whole insurgency, but they tried to negate the fact that the Iraqis had a legitimate resistance movement. "His death will help the Iraqi mujahideen, because now no one can accuse them of being followers of international terrorism. He had created an umbrella network for the mujahideen in Iraq ... as an attempt to unify them and to have the nucleus of an Islamic state. And this group will continue to work. "Zarqawi's main loss [will be felt] not in Iraq, but the region. He was trying to expand the jihad to the rest of region, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon," he added. From Baghdad, a commander of the Iraqi insurgency was more upbeat about Zarqawi's death. "May God have mercy upon him, but things will change now," he said. "[Zarqawi] was committing lots of mistakes. Just wait for a few weeks and you will see the difference." In the funeral tent, the teenager next to me was wearing a black cap. "My uncle might be dead, but his ideas are here," he said, pointing at his heart. The sheikh, Zarqawi's former comrade, was looking to the future: "Oh, Allah, we pledge our alliance to our brother Abu Abdul-Rahman." In reference to the new head of the shoura council of mujahideen, the umbrella group formed a few months ago by Zarqawi, he named Abu Abdul-Rahman al-Iraqi as the head of the new organisation. "Allahu Akbar ... Allahu Akbar" came the cry. "Oh, Bin Laden, don't worry, we will be Zarqawis," shouted other men.